DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 10/31/2024, 08/27/2025, and 03/03/2026 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the Examiner.
Priority
This application is a continuation of PCT/JP2022/020830, filed 05/19/2022.
Examiner’s Note
The Examiner cites particular columns, paragraphs, figures, and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may also apply. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the Applicant fully consider the references in its entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the Examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1 and 3-4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Notani et al. (US 20200019907 A1) hereafter Notani in view of Main et al. (US 5893905 A) hereafter Main, further in view of Kogiso et al. (US 20140297354 A1) hereafter Kogiso.
Regarding claim 1, Notani teaches:
A work management device comprising processing circuitry (Paragraph 38; “As used herein, a “computer application” is a computer executable software application of any type that executes processing instructions on a computer or embedded in a processor”, computer corresponding to the work management device, processor comprising processing circuitry) to:
identify an affected task that may be affected by a delay in the delay task (Paragraph 35; “Critical path detection is performed by analyzing task dependencies and timing to determine which tasks must be completed on time to avoid a delay in overall project completion time.”, and “At block 506, users across projects are notified when their tasks are on the critical path and impacted by the same or different project tasks.”, in which the tasks belonging to users that are affected by a delay in processing of a previous task are identified in order for notification to occur.), and refer to dependence relation information that indicates a dependence relation between tasks so as to identify, as the affected task, a task whose requirement for execution is completion of the delay task (Paragraph 35; “Critical path detection is performed by analyzing task dependencies and timing to determine which tasks must be completed on time to avoid a delay in overall project completion time.”, explicitly disclosing task dependencies between schedules. Further, “Critical paths impacted by the same or different project tasks are determined, at block 504. At block 506, users across projects are notified when their tasks are on the critical path and impacted by the same or different project tasks” shows identification of which tasks are impacted/affected by changes to another task, and expressly identifies impacts resulting from a task duration change and determining what impact changes have on other tasks, corresponding to a delay. Paragraph 37 contemplates a task whose requirement for execution is completion of a delayed task, as evidenced by “According to one embodiment, task dependencies are detected between schedules to improve project completion prediction and allow for improving mitigation measures. Possible techniques to detect task dependencies include without limitation: (i) simple detection of end and start time equality between tasks;”, which provides a basis for a dependency in which the end of one task corresponds to the start of another task. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized that task dependencies in which the end of one task results in the beginning of a second task would be obvious to have the second task be dependent on the first, yielding the predictable result of identifying task(s) that would be affected by a delay in completion of a preceding task.);
notify a person in charge of the affected task by displaying information about the affected task (Paragraph 35; “At block 506, users across projects are notified when their tasks are on the critical path and impacted by the same or different project tasks. The impact the changes (task duration change, task resource change, task dependency change, new task, task completed, task cancellation) are determined at block 508. Users are provided what impact the changes will have on other tasks, and critical path dimensions such as project and sub-project completion dates, at block 510. At block 512, the impact of milestones (site equipment and material delivery times, resource availability times, and the like) will also be considered when calculating critical paths across schedules.”, explicitly notifying the users, who the affected tasks belong to, thereby being a person in charge of the affected task, by notifying information about the impact of the changes on other tasks, thereby displaying information about the affected task and information about the delayed task.).
Notani does not teach accept delay information that indicates a negatively impacted task, the delay task being a task in which a delay may occur; identify a task that is allocated a same resource as a resource allocated to the delay task..
However, Main teaches:
accept delay information that indicates a delay task, the delay task being a task in which a delay may occur (Col. 8, lines 30-35; “The client workstations 110A-110C also perform a periodic process that collects pertinent data from the tables in the production server 106, analyzes this data to determine which jobs are negatively impacting a SLA, and triggers flags for the user to designate a SLA in jeopardy. This process is referred to as the periodic data analysis process.”, where the system collects data, corresponding to accepting information, analyzes data to determine which jobs, corresponding to tasks, are negatively impacting a SLA, corresponding to a delay in completion as evidenced by Col. 4, lines 61-65, “notification of any discrepancies or problems (delays, ABENDs, etc.)”, explicitly contemplating a delayed task.).
Notani and Main are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of task scheduling. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the teachings of Notani and Main to have accepted delay information indicating a delayed task, the delayed task being a task in which a delay may occur, and further provide information about the delayed task to the user of Notani. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized collecting pertinent task data and analyzing the data to determine delayed tasks to be a known method in the art as timely identification of such tasks would allow a system to account for the effect of task delay on SLA performance, as motivated by the disclosure of Main (Col. 4, lines 61-65; Col. 8, lines 30-35), the implementation of which would yield the predictable result of providing a user with information indicative of a task delay to perform corrective actions based thereon.
Notani in view of Main does not teach identify a task that is allocated a same resource as a resource allocated to the delay task.
However, Kogiso teaches:
refer to allocation relation information that indicates resources respectively allocated to a plurality of tasks (Paragraph 69; “Based on the workflow definition information 2, the control unit 4 identifies, among the tasks included in the workflows, a plurality of tasks using the same resource. Then, based on the content of each of the identified tasks, defined in the workflow definition information 2, the control unit 4 determines an execution sequence of the tasks”, explicitly referring to workflow definition information and using the control unit to identify tasks using resources included in the workflow.);
identify a task that is allocated a same resource as a resource allocated to the preceding task (Paragraph 69; “Based on the workflow definition information 2, the control unit 4 identifies, among the tasks included in the workflows, a plurality of tasks using the same resource. Then, based on the content of each of the identified tasks, defined in the workflow definition information 2, the control unit 4 determines an execution sequence of the tasks”, disclosing the identification of a plurality of tasks using the same resource among an execution sequence, thereby identifying a task allocated a same resource as one allocated to the preceding task in the sequence.).
Notani, Main, and Kogiso are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of task scheduling. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the teachings of Notani, Main, and Kogiso, to have referred to allocation resource information that indicates resources respectively allocated to a plurality of task, and to identify a task that is allocated a same resource as a resource allocated to the preceding task, the preceding task being the delayed task of Notani and Main. Kogiso provides the motivation for such a combination, “focusing on the content of tasks using the same resource facilitates analysis and comparison of the content of tasks, which in turn facilitates identifying omissible tasks and also improves the accuracy of the identification. For example, by identifying tasks using the same resource, it is possible to easily identify, among the tasks, tasks whose content is the same and tasks having contents opposite to each other” (Paragraph 73). A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized the identification of resources that may be delayed in response to a delay, and identification of relevant tasks that are delayed due to being allocated to that same resource as a known method in the art as error detection and error correction in execution of sequences of tasks are a known method, whose implementation would yield the predictable result of identification of which downstream tasks are affected by a delay in an upstream task upon which the downstream task may be dependent on, thereby allowing for error correction.
Claim 3 recites similar limitations as those of claim 1, directed toward a method. Claim 3 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 1.
Claim 4 recites similar limitations as those of claim 1, directed toward an apparatus, additionally reciting a non-transitory computer readable medium, a progress acceptance process, an impact identification process, and a notification process. Notani teaches:
a non-transitory computer readable medium (Paragraph 44; “the present invention includes a computer program product which may be hosted on a computer-usable storage medium 14 having computer-usable program code embodied in the medium and includes instructions which perform the processes set forth in the present specification on a processing unit 12. The storage medium 14 may include, but is not limited to, any type of disk including floppy disks, optical disks, CD-ROMs, magneto-optical disks, ROMs, RAMs, EPROMs, EEPROMs, flash memory, magnetic or optical cards, or any type of media suitable for storing electronic instructions.”, ROM corresponding to a non-transitory CRM.);
an impact identification process (Paragraph 35; “Critical path detection is performed by analyzing task dependencies and timing to determine which tasks must be completed on time to avoid a delay in overall project completion time.”, and “At block 506, users across projects are notified when their tasks are on the critical path and impacted by the same or different project tasks.”, in which the tasks belonging to users that are affected by a delay in processing of a previous task are identified in order for notification to occur, in which the steps of critical path detection.);
and a notification process (Paragraph 35; “At block 506, users across projects are notified when their tasks are on the critical path and impacted by the same or different project tasks. The impact the changes (task duration change, task resource change, task dependency change, new task, task completed, task cancellation) are determined at block 508. Users are provided what impact the changes will have on other tasks, and critical path dimensions such as project and sub-project completion dates, at block 510. At block 512, the impact of milestones (site equipment and material delivery times, resource availability times, and the like) will also be considered when calculating critical paths across schedules.”, explicitly notifying the users, who the affected tasks belong to, thereby being a person in charge of the affected task, by notifying information about the impact of the changes on other tasks, the steps of which correspond to a notification process.).
Main teaches:
a progress acceptance process (Col. 8, lines 30-35; “The client workstations 110A-110C also perform a periodic process that collects pertinent data from the tables in the production server 106, analyzes this data to determine which jobs are negatively impacting a SLA, and triggers flags for the user to designate a SLA in jeopardy. This process is referred to as the periodic data analysis process.”, where the system collects data, corresponding to accepting information, analyzes data to determine which jobs, corresponding to tasks, are negatively impacting a SLA, corresponding to a delay in completion, the steps of which correspond to the progress acceptance process.).
Claim 4 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 1.
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Notani in view of Main, further in view of Kogiso, further in view of Iida et al. (US 20200039453 A1) hereafter Iida.
Regarding claim 2, Notani in view of Main, further in view of Kogiso teach the device of claim 1. Notani teaches:
wherein the processing circuitry (Paragraph 38; “As used herein, a “computer application” is a computer executable software application of any type that executes processing instructions on a computer or embedded in a processor”, the processor comprising processing circuitry) identifies, as the affected task, a task that is scheduled to start after completion of execution of the delay task (Paragraph 35; “Critical path detection is performed by analyzing task dependencies and timing to determine which tasks must be completed on time to avoid a delay in overall project completion time.”, explicitly disclosing task dependencies between schedules. Further, “Critical paths impacted by the same or different project tasks are determined, at block 504. At block 506, users across projects are notified when their tasks are on the critical path and impacted by the same or different project tasks” shows identification of which tasks are impacted/affected by changes to another task, and expressly identifies impacts resulting from a task duration change and determining what impact changes have on other tasks, corresponding to a delay. Paragraph 37 contemplates a task whose requirement for execution is completion of a delayed task, as evidenced by “According to one embodiment, task dependencies are detected between schedules to improve project completion prediction and allow for improving mitigation measures. Possible techniques to detect task dependencies include without limitation: (i) simple detection of end and start time equality between tasks;”, which provides a basis for a dependency in which the end of one task corresponds to the start of another task.).
Kogiso teaches:
tasks that are allocated the same resource as the resource allocated to the preceding task (Paragraph 69; “Based on the workflow definition information 2, the control unit 4 identifies, among the tasks included in the workflows, a plurality of tasks using the same resource. Then, based on the content of each of the identified tasks, defined in the workflow definition information 2, the control unit 4 determines an execution sequence of the tasks”, disclosing the identification of a plurality of tasks using the same resource among an execution sequence, thereby identifying a task allocated a same resource as one allocated to the preceding task in the sequence.).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have had modified Notani in view of Main with the teachings of Kogiso such that the preceding task in the sequence is identified as the delayed task. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized identification of the resource which may be stalled due to a delayed task as a known method in the art as a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated by the need to identify the downstream tasks assigned to the resource which may be stalled due to the delay, yielding the predictable result of identification of tasks that are assigned to the same resource and allowing for correct error detection for corrective action to be taken.
Notani in view of Main, further in view of Kogiso does not teach a task that is scheduled to start within a reference time period after completion of execution of the preceding task.
However, Iida teaches:
a task that is scheduled to start within a reference time period after completion of execution of the preceding task (Paragraph 50; “The activation start time constraint (second line in FIG. 9) is the maximum time that can be tolerated as an interval between the end of the previous task and the start of the next task when a plurality of tasks are executed consecutively.”, disclosing a time interval tolerance within which a task is scheduled to begin after completion of execution of the previous task in sequence.).
Notani, Main, Kogiso, and Iida are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of task scheduling. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the teachings of Notani, Main, Kogiso, and Iida, to have identified as the affected task, a task scheduled to start in a reference time period after execution of the delayed task of Notani in view of Main, further in view of Kogiso. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized identification of a temporal relationship between completion of a preceding task and commencement of a subsequent task to be a known method in the art in task scheduling methodologies, and applying such a time period criterion to the identification of subsequent task would allow tasks scheduled to begin shortly after the preceding, delayed, task to be identified for consideration when the preceding task is delayed, whose implementation would yield the predictable result of identifying the subsequent task as an affected task.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Nastacio (US 20090157459 A1) discusses determining whether dependent relationships between project tasks causes a future project task to be late and notifying the end user in response (Paragraph 21).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KENNETH P TRAN whose telephone number is (571)272-6926. The examiner can normally be reached M-TH 4:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. PT, F 4:30 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. PT, or at Kenneth.Tran@uspto.gov.
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/KENNETH P TRAN/Examiner, Art Unit 2196
/APRIL Y BLAIR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196
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